


this crazy lazy river that we call life

by strikethesun



Series: The Anne Neville Cycle [5]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Kid OCs - Freeform, Trauma, Waterpark, arguments about parenting strategies, convoluted premise, references to wisconsin landmarks, reincarnation AU--but what if it sucked for everybody?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikethesun/pseuds/strikethesun
Summary: “like, yeah, late-stage capitalism is a certain kind of hell, but don’t you think this kind of thing would have once been forbidden to the commons or something like that?”the lancasters go on vacation, bringing along an increasingly frustrated anne. everyone's got a story to tell.
Relationships: Edward of Lancaster | Prince of Wales/Anne Neville Queen of England, Henry VI/Marguerite d'Anjou | Henry VI/Margaret of Anjou
Series: The Anne Neville Cycle [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750822
Kudos: 6





	this crazy lazy river that we call life

catherine made sure her grandson was asleep, his breathing deep and regular, before turning to anne. “i might not know much about love—in fact, i know i don’t—but when i saw you and ned sharing one of those double tubes...it looked like love to me, or at least some form of it.” 

anne looked up from her phone, the wet hair plastered to her neck and shoulders hardly budging as her head swiveled. “i don’t know anymore.” she preemptively wiped a tear away; had she not cried enough back in the hotel room, when her boyfriend walked in on her and his own mother finally breaking their silence over everything that had happened and had been left unsaid, and finding that after five-hundred-and-fifty years there was no choice but to yell and scream and throw pillows and kick over chairs? 

henry volunteered to put the room back in order, a clever move because it allowed him to avoid the awkwardness of having to stand, half-naked, in the elevator with his wife, son, and son’s girlfriend as they journeyed back to the waterpark. said elevator ride was just as awkward as henry predicted, and ned silently cursed his father for getting out of it— _as he always does._

catherine wasn’t aware that anything was out of the ordinary until the three came back to the pool-side cabana and each looked equally as though they would rather be anywhere else in the world. after putting a towel over her phone, margaret silently took her daughter’s hand and made for one of the larger slides as ned peeled off towards the wave pool. anne, emotionally exhausted, took up residence in one of the recliners next to the one catherine had spent most of the day in with either one or both of her young grandchildren sprawled on her stomach. knowing she wouldn’t be able to speak for long without sobbing, anne texted catherine a basic summary of the conversation that had been had in the room, key points such as “it’s pretty fucked up that you’ve never told your younger, non-reincarnated (to your knowledge) children what’s up with their family” and “i don’t need to hear parenting advice from someone who died childless” and “do you really want to go there?” and “no, which is why i wasn’t going to bring it up, ever, and just live our lives like normal fucking people” and “but we’re _not,_ and that’s why i’m on a family vacation with a boy whose therapist contacted me from several states away because i might ‘help him work through some things,’ due to our ‘ _unique connection,’_ and now at sixteen i’m forced to think about whether i should spend the rest of my life with someone i barely know who only reminds me of war or someone who reminds me of pain and fear but can at least reunite me with my son,” and so on. 

catherine scrolled through the wall of text, seemingly unaffected, until she got to the part about how henry didn’t come back from the room because he was busy repositioning the furniture and fluffing the thrown pillows. she laughed at that, and woke up little jasper—anne still couldn’t get over what she saw as the inherent injustice in not letting a child know who he’s named after. 

when anne didn’t respond to catherine’s mention of the way that she had dozed off, curled up with ned on the lazy river just a couple cruel hours earlier, catherine filled in with “have you ever considered that maybe i’m just happy to have a little boy named jasper in my arms again?” 

anne sighed. “i shouldn’t have even tried with margaret. why are we all so…”

“predictable?” catherine grinned.

“and yet we don’t learn.”

“i don’t know,” catherine muttered, staring at the bunched-up part of her swimsuit held firmly in jasper’s little hand. “but i prefer to focus on all the ways we _have_ learned instead,” and she gestured to the multitudes walking past the cabana, and floating down the lazy river a few feet beyond, and tried to invite anne to listen to the symphony of laughter and screams of joy through gesture alone. “like, yeah, late-stage capitalism is a certain kind of hell, but don’t you think this kind of thing would have once been _forbidden to the commons_ or something like that?”

anne sniggered at the weird voice catherine lapsed into when she liked to make fun of the world they once knew—the world only catherine, who had forty-five years ago seduced a young, rising harry monmouth at a cocktail party because she knew even from his brief television ad that it was _him_ and _he will give me my boy again,_ and had been living off of billionaire-bastard-son-hush-money ever since, seemed able to poke fun at. catherine, who had refused to play by its rules as soon as she could get away from court, who had partnered up with another disaffected foreigner who no longer knew what they were still doing in england. _who anne had always secretly looked up to, and secretly wished she could emulate._

catherine’s accent, when she wanted to mock medieval aristocracy, was somewhere between the actual stilted middle english she once spoke and hollywood-cockney, for no discernible reason other than that she didn’t know how else to sound properly “english.” she and anne shared a laugh at her own silliness, and jasper’s eyes opened as he squirmed on his grandmother’s bosom. catherine stroked his back gently. “it’s nice to have grandkids at all, now that i think about it. so fewer childbirth deaths! that’s awesome, right?”

“yeah, it is, actually.” anne’s unexpected smile was matched by catherine’s. “i should’ve talked to you first about all that. something about jasper and kat just...really bothers me,” and she hoped that the child was too fully immersed in finding a comfortable position to take note of his own name. 

catherine once again ensured that he had fallen asleep, then turned back to anne. “it’s maybe not the parenting choice i would’ve gone with, but i’m just so happy for henry. i can tell he and margaret always wanted a bigger family, and if they decide that bigger family doesn’t need to be included in the centuries-old trauma, i guess i can’t really blame them.” her face darkened. “you also don’t know what it’s like to raise a reincarnated child. adolescence can be hard for anyone, and our shit-stained baggage doesn’t help, but henry spent the first five years of his life wide-eyed, incapable of telling me what was wrong because he didn’t know the right words yet. and ned was the same, but a lot fussier.” catherine ran a gentle hand through jasper’s brown curls. “i’ve been playing the grandma-nanny role for a while now, and kat and this one have been unmistakably easier kids to deal with. the occasional misgiving aside, i’m tempted to just say: _good for them. they’ve earned it.”_

anne winced at the pure feeling in catherine’s voice. before talking to her boyfriend’s grandma, she had occupied herself by feeling sorry for herself as she scrolled twitter, but now she found herself recalling the way margaret looked at her when she called her _a narcissist who will never learn to deal with the fact that she let her son die in a pointless power grab, and thinks she can make it up by letting his old widow tag along on summer vacation._ she felt stupid saying it, but had repressed that wounded-animal gaze until catherine made her think about things from margaret’s perspective. margaret, who had wanted a daughter for almost six hundred years, a little girl she could whisper secret affirmations to just like her mother and grandmother had whispered to her, maybe even bringing up that dread _maid of orleans_ before hastily adding that her child’s father did, in fact, have the divine right to rule over france, and it’s a _shame_ that joan couldn’t see that. margaret, who had fewer happy memories to look back on than anyone else in the family, for she hadn’t felt unadulterated happiness since she was perhaps twenty and not entirely reviled by an entire population yet. margaret, who _knew_ in her bones that her son’s death was on her resume, but how the hell was she supposed to deal with that in any way other than repressing it? 

“i kind of feel like a dick now, to be totally honest.” 

“you’re sixteen, anne. if you aren’t a bit of a dick now, then when?” 

as she said that, margaret re-entered the cabana, a giggling, dripping kat in tow. she fell back in another recliner, and kat habitually found her way onto her mother’s lap, though she was too large now to fit as comfortably as jasper did on catherine’s. in the moment before margaret turned a cold, stony eye on anne, the latter saw the absolute warmth of her smile as she ran a towel over kat’s hair. she wasn’t sure if it would ever stop _bothering_ her—doesn’t a child deserve to know where they come from, in every meaning of the word? but anne was beginning to realize that that particular crusade was just a manifestation of her general frustration with this family—when ned invited her, she assumed there would be a catching-up, or at least some kind of acknowledgement of why she was staying at a waterpark with someone she had only been online-dating for a couple months. but as the hours spent squished between ned and his eight-year-old sister in the back of a van rolling down rural illinois, then wisconsin highways ticked by, conversation only revolving around work, or school, or whatever song was currently on the radio, anne increasingly understood that they simply _didn’t talk about it._

the look that margaret gave anne over her daughter’s head was piercing, but still struck anne as ultimately defensive. anne was an invader, a guest welcomed only under the silent condition that she wouldn’t draw attention to the absurdity of their situation. when she violated that one condition, she became an enemy; what protected anne from a hearty slap included the presence of margaret’s young children, the presence of margaret’s mother-in-law, the fact that the cabana had no door and was really quite open to the public, which teemed beyond its threshold, the fact that her husband could walk in at any moment and violence of any kind made him sad, and the fact that her son could walk in at any moment and wouldn’t have been a fan of that sort of treatment of his girlfriend. anne mouthed _i’m sorry_ and hoped that margaret could read lips. her face softened. 

“kat, why don’t you take jasper to the big bucket again?” at this, jasper shot up, only hurting catherine slightly with the force of his push, and grabbed his sister’s hand. the two wandered off together, leaving behind three women who had faith in the ability of the park’s lifeguards to keep the kids safe. margaret stood up a moment later and sighed. “anne, can we take this to the lazy river? if i don’t get more pool time today i’m going to start feeling like this was a waste of money.” 

within minutes, anne found herself floating down the lazy river, not in a double tube like before, but in a single that margaret was holding onto the handle of from her own single. they were facing in opposite directions, which meant that margaret couldn’t see when henry, still insisting on only taking his shirt off once he got to the cabana, came back from the room, and anne couldn’t see when ned walked past, seemingly not noticing that his mom and girlfriend were in the lazy river together, towards an undetermined location. 

henry took up the seat that anne had just sat in, carefully moving her phone to a table. “are you still enjoying yourself, mom?”

catherine felt the absence of jasper more than she had felt his weight, but looked up from her kindle and smiled appropriately. “i seem to be having a better time than the rest of this family, save for maybe the little ones.”

“oh, i saw them on the way here. or rather, they saw me first, because kat got me with one of those water guns,” henry said, his hair still dripping. “yeah, they seem to be having a better time than the rest of us, but isn’t that always true?”

“maybe that’s an argument you should bring up to anne. graph out your levels of happiness, and show mathematically that kat and jasper are better off the way they are. turn it into a powerpoint.”

henry wasn’t always excellent at parsing out sarcasm, but catherine was good at making it obvious. he chuckled. “maybe it’s just because they’re kids, though. i mean, they have plenty of opportunities to have new traumatic experiences, right? it’s not like we’re alone in that.”

“no, not at all, and that’s something i’d like to get across to anne if she ever wants to hang out with our family again.” catherine sat up a little straighter. “we’re not _that_ different from anyone else. if life had played out differently for me, i think i would’ve liked to just settle down with a nice, normal guy, and leave it all behind.”

“you always were good at that,” henry replied, and if it had been anyone else catherine would have detected some malice in those words, but he meant it sincerely, and not without admiration. he had spent his own childhood and adolescence yearning for one particular woman, and the chance she could give him at redemption, but somewhere, deep down, he hoped that he would never see her again. maybe he could simply devote himself to his studies, live off his father’s guilt-driven trust fund, or, even wilder, start a new family, and cast off all the old baggage entirely.

but then he had met margaret, who met his shelf stocked with various meds with relief, and felt useful when she could soothe him back to sleep from sweating, shaking nightmares. sometimes their nightmares even synced up, and they’d both have to convince the other of their continued existence— _who else would understand?_

“i’m sorry,” anne said, out loud this time. margaret looked at her. 

“i know you are. did you think i could hold a grudge over a sixteen-year-old?”

“you held a grudge over an eighteen-year-old for a while,” anne responded, and was met with margaret pushing her tube directly into a water jet in the wall. once anne pushed the curtains of wet hair away from her eyes, though, she saw that margaret was laughing. 

“he didn’t _stay_ eighteen!”

“and i’m not going to stay sixteen either, and neither is ned!” _and kat and jasper are going to grow up too,_ but anne held her tongue.

“no, you certainly won’t,” margaret replied, grabbing the handle of anne’s tube again. “you’ll see how hard it is to be a mother one day.” she looked away. “ _again,_ that is. if you so choose.”

anne rested her hands on her bare stomach. “sometimes it just feels like i have to choose _now,_ and it almost makes me miss the days when i had no say over it, you know?” 

and margaret _did_ know, as much as she hated to admit it, so she nodded.

“like, i really like ned, and i like all you guys a lot, but i haven’t even met richard again yet, not in-person.” anne steeled herself for margaret’s reaction to her dark, yorkist invocation, and realized in the same moment that she wasn’t even sure if ned ever told his mom who else was in that group chat. but margaret simply nodded again.

“there was never anyone else for me, but i can imagine how hard it would be for you. if nothing else, catherine and i wanted our sons again.” at a fork in the river, margaret used a foot to push off the wall and send them to the right. 

“i don’t even know if i want mine again.” anne watched her hand in the water, the way the image of it distorted under its surface. “is that bad? am i selfish because i don’t want to relive his death over and over? because i think that’s all i’d do if i had him again. what if he asks me why i wasn’t there when he died?” and she stopped, because she suddenly found it difficult to find air.

“anne, look at me.” 

she did, reluctantly, hoping that her tears weren’t too obvious in the midst of the remnants of her punishment for bringing up that _other_ edward. margaret’s mouth twisted, and anne took that as a sign that her hopes were in vain.

“it’s been an eventful day, hasn’t it?” margaret broke out into a smile, which was almost more intimidating than when she glared. “i don’t envy you. i was you, once, even if it wasn’t quite the same. i thought i’d break off, start a new life for myself, but it was over once i met henry.” she grabbed anne’s hand. “but i don’t regret any of it. kat and jasper are our way of proving that we aren’t just repeating history. any grandkid you would give us would do the same.” 

they both ducked in unison to avoid another water jet. “but no pressure, anne. i mean it. if you actually managed to _do_ it—said _‘fuck you’_ to my son _and_ richard, and started a completely new life—i’d love you for it. we all would.”

“but i never could leave it all behind, then or now, because of you,” catherine said, reaching for her son’s hand. he clasped it. “i know it’s not something to be particularly proud of, but i had sex with a man i’ve never liked just to get you back again. that’s a mother’s love.” 

henry blushed a little at the reminder of his illegitimacy— _that doesn’t matter anymore, stop it, stop it_ —but squeezed catherine’s wrinkled hand tight. “i’ve always appreciated it.”

“he loves you too, you know. in his own way. he always has,” but catherine decided it wasn’t a good time or place to address the way that harry’s love seemed to consist of throwing money at them so that they wouldn’t publicly acknowledge the connection, even if that money _did_ pay for nice things like two generations of much-needed therapy, anne’s bus ticket from ohio, and the trip they were currently on. _there’s nuance to it, you know?_ _  
_

“i know,” henry replied, and thought of the couple times that his dad let him stay over at his vacation home on lake geneva. he remembered the way his large hand felt on his own small back, the look of concern in his eyes when henry didn’t respond to his questions instantly, the drunken apology when he got scared at how fast the motorboat was going that quickly became about so, so much more than the motorboat. it had ended with both them curled up on the floor, sobbing in tune with the gentle rocking of the water, muttering something about french territory. that was more than thirty years ago, but the feeling of the rough boat carpeting on his cheek was so present that he nearly reached up to touch it—but he knew that instead he’d only find an admittedly mediocre attempt at a beard. “he’s just not very good at showing it.”

catherine nodded, recognizing her own words bouncing back at her from decades ago. “don’t give him the satisfaction of thinking about him anymore. you’re a better dad than he could even _dream_ of being.”

ned leaned back against the railing, absentmindedly trying to find the cabana from the vantage point of the lofty landing. he thought he saw his dad and grandma, but it wasn’t clear. he hoped this trip wouldn’t prove to be the end of his relationship with anne—he was really starting to like her, more than he initially thought he would. when his therapist managed to get ahold of her and richard, through means she still hadn’t disclosed to any of them, a world opened up.

a world where he didn’t have to watch what he said around his little siblings, or ignore the look in his parents’ eyes when he did _anything_ or went _anywhere_ because they still couldn’t quite believe that they wouldn’t lose him again. one of the first images he sent them was of his family at, of all goddamn places, _medieval times,_ and when he captioned it with “btw our knight lost. some things never change,” anne and richard had asked to do their first video call just so that they could laugh about it together. 

a similar thought crossed anne’s mind, even as she held margaret’s hand, now that she knew that kat and jasper weren’t in on it. _how they hell did they keep a straight face? didn’t they buy kat and jasper some stupid light-up crowns or whatever? or am i just remembering the picture wrong?_ she made a mental note to check it again once she got back to her phone, deep in the archives of what she liked to term _a most unlikely_ group chat _._

but ned was regretting having sent it. he had set up anne to believe that his family was funny, relatable, able to poke fun at the past, when he had only picked a single night to introduce them with, and a very non-representative one at that. 

he didn’t think about it for too long, though, partly because introspection wasn’t one of his strong suits, but also partly because it was his turn to go down the slide.

kat half-dragged jasper up the slick stairs; he was always more hesitant than her, and it was a perpetual source of annoyance. she had the sense that ned would have been more fun as a little brother and jasper as an older one, but she also felt that she hardly knew what ned was like as a kid, since he had always been so much older than her.

as kat passed through a waterfall of jets, jasper suddenly let go. “i don’t wanna, kat.”

“it’s just water!”

but jasper couldn’t be pushed. he wished he was napping with grandma again.

as kat turned away to trek onwards, up towards the bucket, she thought about her mother. she was not a woman good at concealing her emotions, and kat had known something was clearly wrong by the way that she grabbed her by the wrist. however, kat also knew better than to ask, so she did what she always did when her mom got into a funk—changed the subject, talked about her little boyfriend at school and how catherine had bought ice cream for her and jasper and what games she most wanted to play in the arcade that evening. and as always, margaret began to glow the more she listened to her daughter prattle on, and put her arm around kat’s shoulders in the way she knew she liked best.

she briefly thought about the difference between her mother’s moods and her father’s moods—where her mother seemed to shut the world out, her father seemed to temporarily leave it involuntarily, and sometimes needed a good shake to return. kat enjoyed supplying those, especially because her dad always met them with a grateful smile, and ruffled her hair as thanks. she didn’t question why those moods occurred; they were simply a fact of life. sometimes mom and dad and even ned needed a quiet afternoon alone. in which case she would bother jasper.

jasper was similarly accustomed to being the outlet for kat’s energy. when they were really small, she would draw all over him in markers, or tickle him until he couldn’t breathe, or purposefully misplace his toys just to see how he would react. it came from no real place of malevolence, just curiosity warped by a sometimes-oppressive emotional atmosphere. as kat turned away from him, he stood still, watching her climb higher and higher. nothing seemed to stop her. jasper returned to the ground floor, where he could put his small foot over the water jets and marvel at the sensation; a form of exploration that felt more secure. he didn’t mind being alone. he often cherished it. 

without warning, two other pairs of feet entered his field of vision. jasper looked up to see his mother and anne, the nice, pretty girl who liked holding his brother’s hand. margaret picked him up, and shared a look with anne over his head. _this is why we do what we do,_ it seemed to say, but _who knows?_ _maybe it got lost in translation_.

ned stood up from his inner tube and started walking back towards the cabana. he was intercepted by kat, who was absolutely drenched. 

“have you stood right under the bucket when it tips yet? you gotta try it, ned, it’s the coolest—”

“kat, i did that before you were even born,” he responded, grabbing his little sister’s hand as they walked back towards the cabana—kat moreso skipping than walking, but ned followed dutifully behind.

henry woke up to margaret’s nudge. he hadn’t planned on falling asleep, but he also hadn’t planned on trying to reorient a heavy chair from a tipped-over position after his wife got angry enough to kick it. he also hadn’t planned on being forced to think _like that_ today, about all the messy, difficult things that anne had pushed to the surface of his mind—it wasn’t quite clear, but he could have sworn he was dreaming before margaret woke up him, something about riding a horse through a dark woods. 

it took a moment to register that margaret wasn’t annoyed, or resigned, or desperate, but simply happy to see him after a couple hours apart. _lord protect me if i ever take this for granted._ and beside her was anne, who looked more relaxed than she had the entire trip so far. and in margaret’s arms was jasper, who was getting a little big to be carried, but clearly relished it regardless.

a moment later, ned and kat appeared, and ned was instantly struck by how familiar his mom and girlfriend seemed with each other, particularly since he had physically prevented them from pulling each other’s hair just earlier that afternoon. catherine gave a knowing nod, and said, “i see i was right about the lazy river and love.” 

jasper and kat took this remark as nothing more than _grandma saying weird things again_ —not unlike the words she whispered while babysitting them at her ample chicago apartment, words about kings and queens and a time long ago and a horrible war and how it never ended but is always ending, words they weren’t supposed to repeat to mom and dad and ned _under any circumstance_. 

ned instantly thought of the way that anne had looked with her head on his chest before the day had gone to hell, how he had tried to count the freckles on her nose while her eyes were still closed. he didn’t question how his grandma knew about such an intimate event, but thought instead that it might be universal.

margaret assumed anne must have had said something important to catherine while they sat in the cabana alone earlier, and briefly questioned whether she should try to get it out of her mother-in-law at some later date. she decided against it, and scolded herself for such a paranoid reaction.

henry thought it was maybe some kind of in-joke that he had missed while making the suite look decent again, but took note of the smile that spread across ned’s face. _did he ever smile like that before?_ but he _evicted the thought_ from his mind, as a therapist had told him to do years ago.

anne looked directly at catherine and suppressed a laugh at her forwardness. _i want to be that bold one day, no matter where my life takes me._ no _, no matter where_ i _take my life._

catherine took note of the silence, and tried to imagine what was going through each of their minds. no matter how old she felt, in any sense of the word, she was always amazed by that secret, forbidden world inside each of them, the one that let her imagine dancing with a welsh courtier again in a dark hallway after her son’s coronation whenever she desired. she adjusted the strap of her swimsuit.


End file.
